Boundaries
by Katia-chan
Summary: Keeping others out is nearly impossible when you yourself long to be within. Hints of AkiGure, 97 spoiler


Boundaries

By Katia-chan

A/N: This…was not even on my to-do list. But as it's the first thing I've managed to write to completion since June, I wasn't about to complain. I still have other things that I intend to take care of, but you'll all have to content yourselves with this for now.

Disclaimer: Still not mine.

Dedication: Dedicated to Adi88 and her Beauty and the Beast imagery, which spawned this idea…though I sort of wandered off into uncharted directions afterwards.

Please review, and hopefully it will prompt me to continue to do more writing while I actually have time. Seriously guys, you are my life force, don't fail me now.

Enjoy!

XXX

He sits on the floor, watching her as she paces, restless and agitated, across the room. Fever burns high in her pale cheeks, and her dark eyes glitter too brightly. Her hands are pressed to her sides, fingers twisting in the material of her robe, as if she must restrain them; keep herself from clawing out of her own skin.

He knows the feeling, though his hands are folded complacently in his lap.

"It's not fair!" she rails, for what seems to him the hundredth time, her weakness making her voice thin and nearly hysterical. "She didn't ask my permission!" He watches her dispassionately, making his boredom no secret. Honestly, he's tired of her obsession. This wasn't why he came to see her.

"Akito," he says, half placating, half condescending, stirring the fire expertly. "Perhaps that was because she didn't need to." She freezes in mid step, and it seems nothing moves for an eternity and a half, and then she turns, lightning quick, and strides towards him, her hands lifting, fluttering, balling into fists by her chest.

She stands before him, her fury making her tower over him, a vicious God, or a woman scorned. It makes no difference to him, he simply watches her across the chasm that cracks and grows at her feet.

He quietly supplicates there, fanning the flames.

"How dare you?!"

"It isn't hard," he murmurs, very calmly.

Her face whitens and twists in rage, and she trembles for a moment, and then raises a hand to slap him, but suddenly she doubles over, pressing both hands to her chest, and begins to cough. The spasms wrack her body, bending her, and she's gasping, hardly able to get her breath, the choking rattling deep down in her lungs. He waits for the worst of it to stop, waits until the horrible wrenching sounds stop coming, and then gently reaches up, his hands circling her waist and drawing her down into his lap. She presses to his chest, her hands clinging to him, buried in his shirt, and gasps, tremors still shaking her entire frame. He softly strokes her back, her hair, and waits for it to subside; rocking her gently as she finally quiets.

"You're alright now," he murmurs, still rocking. He can see she's afraid, possessed by an old fear, one that ages her quickly, and yet she's a child in the face of it. Her head drops, and she presses her cheek against his chest.

"You shouldn't say what you did," she says, ignoring his comfort, still fixated on her tirade, though exhaustion has softened her voice.

"But I can't lie to you." he's lying. But at least he tries to be gentle about it, brushing his fingers softly over the back of her neck. "I only said what was true."

"But it's not," she says, stirring fitfully in his arms. He tightens them, just a little, to still her.

"You said she never asked you…" he muses. It wasn't what he'd wanted to talk about, but he knows she won't let the issue rest. Better to deal with it then. "But you did give her your permission, in a way."

"I did not," she says, angrily raising her head. He lifts a hand and gently presses it back down, his fingers lightly tangling in her hair. "You're all mine," she says quietly, though her voice is petulant. "She has no right to touch you like she does. I never said she could."

He thinks, 'do you have the right?' but doesn't say it aloud. It's a battle he'll save for another time, when it will accomplish more. For now, he folds one of her hands in his, softly squeezing her fingers. "You started it," he murmurs, tightening his grip a little when she would try and move away, and her rebellion doesn't last long. "You opened the way."

"Then I can stop it," she says decisively, a child reassuring herself that she is in control of her world.

'Yes,' he thinks, 'But only if you want to lose us too.'

He doesn't say it out loud though.

"Yes, I suppose you could." is all he says. Because somehow he knows she won't understand. How could she? The intertwining of people's lives; the ways they shape and build and break each other, are all lost on her. She has never had anyone truly touch her; she stays safe beneath her own globe of fragile glass, but she must bare all of them to the world if she wishes to be able to lay hands on them, and so she'll allow others to enter, even against her will, because she cannot own them, and touch them at the same time, without letting the world filter in at her heels.

She is one of them, but yet she is God, and so she cannot live in their protection with them; cannot seal them all away together, but must exist outside, because otherwise she would lose her precious power; the power she thinks she has from being close to them, but that only truly comes from distance; the power that holds her above them, on her pedestal. He hates that power, and fights it consciously every hour of every day, even as she fights it without knowing, and both of them always head steadily towards her destruction, and the destruction of all she holds dear.

When she realizes this, she'll hate it, she'll fight it, but in the end, she won't have any choice but to give into it, because she needs them too much, and she'll be forced into sacrificing them for that very reason.

He knows one day he will tell her this, and he wonders, with nearly apathetic curiosity, if it will shatter her.

Holding her, rocking her towards exhausted sleep, and gently kissing her, he knows he wouldn't mind if it did.

He could reach her then.

XXX

TTFN

Katia-chan


End file.
